Thursday, May 24, 2007

Man, turn off the news for a few days and you almost miss the most important story of the week!

It is an established fact that Turkey has been amassing troops on its border with Iraq. Currently there are some 400,000 ready to rock and roll. The weekend bombing in Ankara that killed 6 and wounded many more may have pushed Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister, over the edge. Ankara believes, but has not yet confirmed, that the attack was carried out by Kurdish separatists operating from Northern Iraq.

Erdogan has told his General Staff (Turkish equivalent of our Joint Chiefs) that if they want to attack "Kurdistan", he will support them. At the same time, he has warned the U.S. that we must crack down on border incursions into Turkey by PKK separatists.

This is a very big deal and we should be paying close attention. Erdogan is not popular with the military at the moment (see previous posts on the situation in Turkey). The military has all but threatened a coup. Erdogan has now called for early elections. I am sure that he would love to give the Turkish people a reason to keep the AKP (conservative party) in power. What better way to do so than to start military action!

In addition, with the election of Sarkozy in France, Turkey's EU membership is even less likely and thus that carrot is no longer viable. Turkey will feel no need to contain itself. There is a great deal of resentment building up against the EU and even the U.S. Turkish liberals are not happy with globalisation nor the feeling that Turkey is being pushed to accept it. All of this puts the U.S. in a very difficult position and could expand the boundaries of the war. Turkey is a long-standing ally with the second largest military in NATO. The U.S. has the largest military in NATO.

Our new president may be inheriting a much bigger problem than Iraq. We may very well be gearing up for a much larger war. If Turkey gets involved in Iraq, then prepare yourselves for Iran to move in. That will pull in Israel, Syria, and the rest. And then we will have a serious big ball game.

2 comments:

I'm not ready to predict an invasion just yet but if one were to occur it would have the added benefit of keeping the Turkish military occupied while the Islamists occupy the Presidency. There have been whispers of coup threats. Either an invasion or a coup would threaten Turkey's admission to the EU but the coup would be more serious.